Day 79 - Rock Steady!

Newcastle Falcons and now Newcastle United have come out to support Northern Rock this week. It was nice to see the first team warming up today with "ROCK STEADY" t-shirts on as well as all the positive advertising around the stadium.

You might be interested to know that there are thousands of pounds of this runner's sponsor money deposited with Northern Rock. This, of course, will be handed over to the Hospice this Thursday at the specially organised Cheque Presentation Evening along with a very generous donation from the Northern Rock Foundation.

While I'm on the subject - plans and preparations for the evening are almost complete. There will be 120 people in attendance representing all aspects of the run. I'm delighted to announce that Biffa from NUFC.com will be there along with some of the readers of his site. Friends, family and colleagues will be there on what should be one of the proudest evenings of my life. Pats on the back, high fives and hugs from the ladies will be the order of the evening!

The buffet should be good. I've already had a sample of the sausage rolls from caterer Lesley Hanson. Lesley, who runs a catering business in her spare time, is providing her services and food at cost price!

I'll be posting the last lot of tickets tomorrow so don't panic if you haven't got yours yet. I'll be finishing off the speeches on the bus on the way to Arsenal on Tuesday. I should get back from this trip in the early hours on Wednesday morning. I have a game of 5-a-side on Wednesday night so goodness knows how tired I'll be come Thursday. I haven't played 5-a-side for 2 years due to the need to avoid injury. Expect a full match report and possibly some photos and a few diagrams of the wonder goals I score!

Day 61 - The generousity continues.

I got a nice surprise today when a "fat" cheque was passed to me by the director of local IT company Savantis.

Earlier in the day colleagues Rob Lincoln and Andy McClean, just like many others of late, increased their original pledges.

These superb pledges have certainly given the fund a great chance of getting up to £28,000 and are very much appreciated.

Meanwhile, I've received a number of raffle prizes to be used for the cheque presentation evening and tickets are selling very well indeed.

Day 59 - The happiest of Happy Cats!

I'm delighted to confirm that music for the cheque presentation evening will be provided by North East band The Happy Cats. The group were formed in 2001 by none other than ex Lindisfarne member Marty Craggs. Accompanying Marty are Brian Duffy and Les Dodds! Get excited! Get very excited!

To have a local band of this standing provide the "soundtrack" to the evening when substantial sums of money are to be handed over to the Hospice is just the icing on the cake. Superb! Just superb!

They sum themselves up as "Take a drop of the Irish, a shot of Cajun, a little country, some folk, a hot spoonful of salsa, a twist of tamla, shake it all up with 30 years of rock ‘n’ roll experience, throw in a dash of three part harmony, garnish with lashings of good humour and you have The Happy Cats!".

Thanks to Keith at Toon Travel and Biffa at NUFC.COM for the "introduction".